31

Herman, the Loyd Society advisor, sneezed and stood, as though backwards momentum was making his body go right off his chair.

"Young lady," he said, "As you may have guessed, we take our Loyd very seriously. You might be right - Sam may actually be in the public domain by now. However, if you want to plaster Sam Loyd on your homecoming dance, I'm going to have to ask you a few questions."

Merry nodded. Since Wolfgang Puck had left in a strange way, Merry had sat quietly with an expression somewhere between resignation and amusement. Puck had been standing in his pith helmet and his blue USPS outfit and half walked around the table doling out circulars for the month-end sale at Macys as though they were candy.

"Wolfy, I don't want it!" Diane had cried.

Puck had nodded and just carried on.

"Listen here, Puck," said Chip the lawyer. "I don't want it either! I generally don't wear blouses!"

"So give it to your wife," Puck said.

"I'm not married," said the lawyer.

"Then-"

"Err, let me amend that," Chip interrupted. "I'm married to the sea."

"To the sea?"

"yeah," said the lawyer. "Matter of fact, I'm due down at quayside, about oh," he checked his silver watch. "Ninety minutes or so."

Puck shook off the idea with a shrug. "Listen," he said, "I generally don't buy clothes there either. But they have these oversized vases that you must see at least once before you die."

"Vases?"

"Vases!" said Puck. "Just picture it. The chilly, sterilized air as you throw back the glass door of the Macy's."

Merry blinked.

"Um," she said. "I'm sorry to interrupt but aren't we getting a little off of Sam Loyd here?"

"You're out of line, young lady," said Diane. "Who's the Society here, you or us? It's us, and we have certain ways in which we do things and as our guest you are obliged to abide by them when you come to visit us, not to mention the fact that you want to be a licensee."

Merry blinked.

"Because there really are not that many licensees in the world. We're very picky about who we allow to represent Sam. If you become a licensee, you're becoming a part of the family. Okay? The Loyd family. So it would be nice if you would remember that and just sit quietly until you are spoken to!"

Breathless, Diane stormed out in search of a drink of water.

Nobody said anything.

"Err.... So about the vases, so anyway," said Puck. "They're these great big ceramic jobbers! Oh man! You wouldn't even recognize one. And do you know what they have sticking out of the vase? These long, strandy type of tree trunks, or branches. Or, it could be cinnamon but if it is, that is some pretty spectacularly sized cinnamon. Four or five of those and the effect, well, let me just say you MUST see it."

With that, he clammed up and took a seat at the table next to Chad. Now there were two sullen, silent, uninvited guests at the meeting.

Merry sighed.

While Merry was waiting, her mind began to wander. Puck hadn't left after all. Hr was sitting right there, going off about vases and Macy's. She waited patiently, because by Loyd Society rules after they heard all new business (of which her request for the dance was considered one,) the Society would take any pending votes. And between the new business and the votes, the society had a segment of the meeting which was for its own amusement.

Diane's head popped around the boardroom door.

"Did you get your drink?" Chip asked.

"Yes," Diane said. "Yes I did. But I came right back because I didn't want to miss the good stuff."

Chip nodded.

"The keys, please," Diane said.

Chip pulled a key ring out of his pocket, and handed them to Diane. Diane used them to unlock a previously unseen cupboard and open it. When she opened the cupboard, Merry could see shelves made of thin metal rods, like a refrigerator.

"Which one are we at, Wolfy?" she asked Puck.

"You're at 43B," Puck said from the corner. A blast of cold air entered the room. Diane stuck her hand past the border and fished around awhile on the other side. She reeled it back in, with a woman's high heeled shoe.

"Errr ... I'm not quite there yet," she said.

She fished around longer and came back with a wicker basket, which she barely managed to wrench out the bars of two shelves in the fridge. It got stuck.

"Help me with this, will you, Herman?" she said. Herman stood and helped Diane yank and yank on the basket. It finally came free from the bars and the pair tumbled over, landing in a heap on the conference room floor. The basket was full of saltines, two to a pack, and when they flew back, the saltines were launched at a
45-degree angle and they flew everywhere!

Puck winced. He looked at Diane and Herman, strewn across the industrial gray carpet.

"Are the crackers hurt?" he said.

Diane looked irritated. "They're not hurt, and neither are we."

And with that, Diane and Herman stood and returned to the stability of their chairs, lifting the basket on to the table. Most everyone pitched in to round up a couple of the small cracker packs, except Puck and Chad, who both just sat like statues.

Merry was feeling at her wit's end but she been chastened enough times that she wasn't going to do it again. She just waited. Then she backpedaled, couldn't stand it any more.

"Excuse me," she said, "that cupboard? It's a fridge?"

"What about it?" said Puck defensively.

"I just, I don't understand, how can it be a fridge? Don't refrigerators need big coils on the back of them? They have to be, um, self-contained boxes? Or something? Where does it go? Diane reached in, and pulled out ... a basket of crackers? I'm sorry but it DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!"

She noticed that everyone at the table was glaring hard at her and Puck reached deeper into the basket.

Merry followed his eyes. A knife? A handkerchief doused in chloroform? Are they going to forcibly tattoo me, like the Yakuza? The thoughts that went through her mind as Puck rummaged and rummaged deeper and deeper in the opaque tan basket, seemed to spin off like isotopes, catching fire each in its own universe where the ideas could manifest themselves without interruption.

"Ah, stop!" she shouted as Puck continued to rummage but never emerge with whatever booty he was looking for. When the crackers had gone flying, Merry had briefly glimpsed the very bottom of the basket and the party had essentially rescued all the crackers from around the room and put them back in the basket.

So among the other mundane anomalies she had to try to wrap her mind around, with no help from anyone else, was how in the world there was space at the bottom of the basket for anything except for crackers. She held her ears stubbornly as Puck finally, finally pulled out a full bottle of vanilla extract.

"Ohh," Puck said. "We got a FULL one."

Chip the lawyer gave a respectful whistle. "We're sure to get really skunked on this one."